5 Items, Zero Spin
1) My letter to Jonah Goldberg is as yet unanswered. Should that change, I hope the response reflects his genuinely held convictions, rather than his efforts to “do his part“ in the spin wars.
2) Johann Hari’s Slate piece on Ayn Rand is just the latest example of a journalist who writes about the extraordinarily popular author but it utterly unable to understand her appeal. Perhaps someone should figure out precisely why so many Americans regard her as someone with valuable insights. I’ll happily submit to an interview on that subject. Meanwhile see here for a smart Ayn Rand critique. (Via Rod Dreher)
3) This is easily the best piece on Michael Bloomberg’s re-election.
4) “If there were no War on Drugs, I sincerely believe that within a single generation, there would be no perceptible “crisis in black America,” and this book shows much of why that’s true. The War on Drugs turns whole neighborhoods against the cops—with no discernible benefit after more than 30 years.” — John McWhorter, recommending the book Snitch.
5) Aztec warriors, enamored by the iridescence of humming birds, sometimes contrived to outfit themselves in ankle length hummingbird feather coats, so that striding into the slanting sunlight of late afternoon they’d shimmer like otherworldly apparitions. How depressing that the most likely contemporary application of this knowledge involves pay per view “wrestling.”
Fuck me, that’s an obscene number of hummingbirds to make one of those things.
One of my projects a few years back was to try to find as many early accounts of the hummingbird, relayed to Europe by 16th century explorers, as I could. I was motivated because I thought, wow, this was really a creature of the new world unlike anything known to the old, of such beauty that it had to capture attention, and if you squished one and brought it back to Europe you couldn’t have explained what it did that was so special: you need the living, moving creature and you can’t keep it that way on the voyage.
I found very little and would be grateful to be pointed towards more as I think it would be wonderful reading.
— Sanjay · Nov 5, 10:04 PM · #
You should contact the author of this piece: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/29/magazine/mute-dancers-how-to-watch-a-hummingbird.html
— Conor Friedersdorf · Nov 5, 10:19 PM · #
Re: (1) — now you know how I feel when you don’t respond to one of my comments. ;-)
Also re: (1) — your open letter to Goldberg is very very long. From what I can tell, you think that (1) Democrats are bad, but (2) Republicans were also bad, so . . . so . . . something or other. (Well, maybe if I’d read more of it, I would understand what the conclusion was.)
It is a pretty crummy choice when you can only vote for Kang, Kodos, or Ross Perot, but if that’s really the choice, then you have to make the best of it.
Let’s hypothetically assume that no matter how bad and not-conservative he is, Bush was nevertheless more conservative and less bad than Kerry or Gore would have been. If so, then presumably a good conservative would support Bush against worse alternatives, while doing what he can to drive Bush in an even less bad direction.
— J Mann · Nov 5, 11:29 PM · #
J Mann — I feel you — none of the contributors respond to my comments. I feel invisible. Oh well, I’ll just keep commenting, trying to do my part.
— mike farmer · Nov 6, 12:02 AM · #
Oh, J Mann. You’re missing all of the subtle, intellectual nuance that sprouts from young Conor’s fertile mind. I mean, you didn’t even name drop Hayek or Kirk in your post. You must be one of those Palin and Beck lovers. A teabagger perhaps? For shame, for shame. Conor grew up in Orange County. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, it gives him x-ray vision into the center of every conservative’s soul. He knows conservatives. He grew up in Orange County. Did I already mention that?
— Lasorda · Nov 6, 12:26 AM · #
Conor,
1. I don’t think you understand what the phrase “extraordinarily popular” means.
2. Far more people regard Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as having valuable insights than feel the same way about Rand. If you understand why they think that about Beck and Limbaugh, it’s pretty easy to understand the Rand lovers out there.
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 6, 01:18 AM · #
“Let’s hypothetically assume that no matter how bad and not-conservative he is, Bush was nevertheless more conservative and less bad than Kerry or Gore would have been.”
I’ll bite. How exactly can one assume that? In what practical way could Kerry or Gore have been worse or less conservative than Bush? Could they have done more to expand the size and power of government? Been a greater menace to invididual liberty? Started more foreign wars and handled them even more poorly?
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 6, 01:23 AM · #
Her “Natural History of the Senses” is fabulous — but that piece contains nothing about hummingbirds anyone with a backyard feeder doesn’t know. David Attenborough just put out a big book on early natural history exploration, but again, no leads.
— Sanjay · Nov 6, 01:25 AM · #
The Slate article is irritating in places. The assertion of Rand’s inverted Bolshevism is pat, to say the least. Yet, misunderstandings about Rand seem to cut both ways. It’s not just certain of Rand’s detractors who seem not to have read her closely. I suspect many of her boosters are guilty of this, too. For example, I don’t buy for a moment that Limbaugh has read Rand. (I don’t know how well Rourke’s spurning of traditional architecture and embrace of domestic terrorism-for-art’s-sake would sit with his listeners). I have a hunch he’s promoting her without getting her, which is hardly better than dismissing her without getting her.
But if one can celebrate Rand without reading her, one can certainly dislike her and have read her quite conscientiously. The Fortune article you linked to made a few good observations, one being that the enthusiasm of her younger readers curdles as they age. However, it’s not for the reasons she gives— Rand’s cold and unyielding adherence to individualism; the problem is the writing, itself. It’s bad. In spite of its abundance, it penetrates very little. The soap opera-y element is fine, but the characters are ridiculous, simultaneously self-important and skin-deep. Their motivations are crudely rendered and stink of juvenile hero-worship.
As a fictionalized manifesto, I guess it’s impressive, but it’s not a very interesting novel. How else do you explain the movie version— also scripted by Rand— which benefits from the acting talents of both Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, but remains a dud?
When Flannery O’Connor said that Rand made Spillane read like Dostoyevsky, she had a point. Of course, she also put Coca Cola in her coffee, and that I definitely don’t get.
— turnbuckle · Nov 6, 01:39 AM · #
Jonah’s remark could probably be taken with a bit more of a grain of salt. If he were really trying to do his part in the spin wars, he would probably just go ahead and do it rather than talking about it. If you spin really well, almost nobody should notice.
Probably he is just making light of the efforts by journalists and dedicated spinners alike to guess at (or create) the real meaning of these races; the exercise, he suggests, is a fun game but not important.
— Aaron · Nov 6, 02:50 AM · #
Why would anyone take Rand seriously? Her ideas are stupid. A world where people acted on her ideas would devole into something Somalia-esqe in a year. That’s that problem with most specific ideologies. Life in the real world requires mental and emotional flexabilty. You can believe as Tea PArtiers do that government has no business intervienning in banking failures. However if you were in the government and acted on that belief a year ago we would be in the midst of a deep depression right now.
— cw · Nov 6, 05:25 AM · #
I think I understand her appeal – I understand the appeal of porn and Big Macs and Andrew Dice Clay, but all of these play on baser instincts, and amount to nothing much intellectually.
Rand tells white guys it’s ok to ignore those pangs of guilt for blowing a bunch of cash on the Porsche. Making white people feel ever so slightly less guilty is a sure path to wealth in America.
— Steve C · Nov 6, 06:20 AM · #
why do I get this weird feeling that everything you do is just purely attention-seeking? are you desperately in need of a steady job or something?
— anonymous · Nov 6, 07:42 AM · #
@MBunge – If I understand correctly, you are alleging that Bush 43 was not only the worst president in all of American history, but that he is the worst president that it is possible to imagine in any plausible circumstance, such that it is not possible for any other national candidate to be less conservative or less bad than he was.
I think that highlights the disagreement pretty well, so I think we can work from there.
I definitely agree that if I believed that your assumption was certainly true, then any “conservative” who backed Bush and didn’t spend a lot of time apologizing would be pretty well exposed as either a liar, a fool, or both.
Now the challenge is that I don’t believe that your assertion is true. In fact, I believe that Bush, as disappointing as he was, was (1) not the worst president in history, was (2) more conservative as president than Gore or Kerry would have been and (3) was probably better as president than Gore or Kerry would have been. (I’ll grant that my certainty on #3 isn’t much higher than 50%). I also think that I’m a reasonable person, sane, not a liar, and that I am reasonably intelligent and well-informed.
Given my assumptions, it’s not crazy for me to back some aspects of the conservative project, notwithstanding that Bush was a disappointment. It wasn’t even crazy for me to back Bush during his term against most alternatives.
Similarly, if you stayed committed to the liberal project after Carter, I wouldn’t think you were dishonest or a nut. Carter was a disappointment in many ways, but I could see how a reasonable liberal might conclude that Carter was still (1) better than the alternative and that (2) the cause of liberalism itself was still important even after Carter.
— J Mann · Nov 6, 05:34 PM · #
Prediction based on the murmurs I hear this morning:
The repulsive, vile shit that folks over at National Review and their ilk try to stir up over this one dude still laid up at CRDAMC, will make even Conor think the shit he’s complaining to Goldberg about is podunk.
— Sanjay · Nov 6, 05:46 PM · #
J Mann – “In fact, I believe that Bush, as disappointing as he was, was (1) not the worst president in history, was (2) more conservative as president than Gore or Kerry would have been and (3) was probably better as president than Gore or Kerry would have been.”
You can believe whatever you like. I’m asking what that belief is based on.
In what ways do you think Gore and Kerry would have been less conservative than Bush? In what ways do you think they would have been, on balance, worse Presidents than Bush?
Here’s the Bush record.
1. Destroyed any budget sanity achieved in the 20 years before he was elected.
2. Created a massive new government entitlement.
3. Launched two wars, one of which we now know didn’t need to be fought and both of which were horribly mishandled.
4. Operated on the conviction that the federal government has the right to spy on people without warrants, hold them without trial and torture them.
5. Sat around with his thumb up his butt while the U.S. financial system steamrolled toward an inevitable crisis (which many other folks did as well).
Let’s just stop there. It’s seems likely that Gore or Kerry wouldn’t have been any better on #5, but how in the world can anyone possibly think they’d have been less conservative or worse than Bush on 1-4?
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 6, 07:16 PM · #
I think they would have been worse on 1, 2, and probably worse on 5. I also think they would have spent a bunch of money on a bunch of other stuff, and regulated a bunch of other stuff.
3. Complicated. Requires a bunch of assumptions to guess what Gore would do when confronted with 9/11. Kerry, IMHO, would probably have been worse, and would have used “blame Bush” to excuse a long start-up, followed by a feckless policy. (Something like we are seeing now.)
4. Would have continued policies of warrantless wiretapping and extradition, but liberals would have complained less.
— J Mann · Nov 6, 07:24 PM · #
Mike, it’s really weird, because I think Bush was awful, but I also feel like the left is in some kind of crisis right now (much worse, actually, than the one on the right everyone’s preoccupied with) where it’s hard for them to articulate much beyond dislike of him, and so I read your comment with a lot of disbelief. I mean, the reasons I think Bush was awful awful awful are all tied up in your #4, and you blow by them. On the other points, wow.
#5 is the worst. Clinton kept on Greenspan when you might’ve thought he wouldn’t on the strength of the “Greenspan put,” put Rubin into Treasury, and saw the tech bubble blow up and the housing bubble start. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to blame either Clinton or GWB for this deep structural failure having to do with long issues in our culture of fincance, mind you — but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to dump this one on Bush at all. #5 is just loose talk.
#1, same. I’m not seeing that there’s been a lot of fiscal discipline in the US except by accident, for a long time.
#2 — are you serious? You’re talking about the stupid Medicare drugs entitlement? I mean, yeah, it’s hell of dumb legislation. Par for the course for the federal government, man. It hardly belongs on a list of why Bush was so damn terrible. Someone was going to pass some dumb Medicare drugs entitlement — everyone had campaigned on it forever — and when passed rest assured it would’ve been stupid.
#3 — before even starting on the wars, let me assert: I think Bush will be viewed, historically, as a great foreign policy president. This maddens me a bit — I think a whole lot of blood spilled in e.g. Angola is one of many reasons I think Reagan was a terrible President, but becuase the big foreign policy issue was the cold war, and Reagan had a vigorously aggressive posture on it, he’s seen as some kind of foreign policy success. Whatever.
Well, in Bush’s case there’d be more justification. I think history will say the big foreign policy issue of our time was managing the rise of Asian powers: y’all think way way too much about the Middle East. GWB has far outshone all Presidents around him in that area. When he took office relations with China were at an all-time low. Bush simultaneously improved — substantially — relations with China, Japan, India and Pakistan. He did that, incidentally, while continuing to at least nag China on human rights, tighten the screws on their ally Burma, meet with the Dalai Lama, and vocally support Taiwanese autonomy — all places where Obama has been much weaker. I don’t think it’s easy to overstate what a huge trick that is in foreign policy, and it’s why I get annoyed — liberal though I am — when I hear how much Obama has improved foreign policy, since all four relationships have worsened since he took office (OK, you can’t blame him for the DPJ: but even if the LDP had stayed in power it’s hard to imagine Obama having anything like the odd tightness between Bush and Koizumi, and he’s been totally passive while the DPJ was campaigning on totally upending the US/Japan alliance, which if it had happened (looks unlikely) would be a foreign policy disaster well beyond anything Bush ever did). Bush started to draw the Asian powers into regional security arrangements, with one prototype being the six-party talks on NoKo (and then the Dems panned him repeatedly and goofily for preferring those to one-on-one negotiations — as the Obama administration now does!) Meanwhile Obama’s developed terrible working relationships with Brown, Sarkozy, and Merkel (and Berlusconi, but OK Silvio’s a nut). I mean, yeah, people poll more pro-US than before, and soft power ain’t nothing. But it’s not as useful as good working relationships with foreign governments and the Bush team appears so far to’ve been better at it. Honest and for true.
As for the wars — I refuse to believe any President would’ve kept us out of Afghanistan, and I doubt it would have gone much better if Petraeus had been President. In fact, any strategic advantage another President might’ve had in Afghanistan has to be considered against the good management of Pakistan and China.
And Iraq? I dunno. I protested against the war in ’91, and then when we went in anyway said, OK, we should finish this thing and get rid of Saddam. Instead we satrved the Iraqis for a decade. Ick. It was a mess, and I think it’s hard to say how a Democratic president would’ve played it: the Clintonista faction of the Dems (most notably the Big Guy) were notably silent or supportive when the war started, and the guys at TNR read pretty strongly in the “cakewalk” crowd.
That’s not a defense of Bush, because there’s much to hate stemming from your #4 (although Obama’s decision to maintain some and let a lot more slide makes it a difficult point to argue.) But packing it in there with that other stuff blunts the whole thing. And failing to recognize Team Bush’s very very real foreign policy strengths, is one of many ways in which we are kneecapping liberal foreign policy.
— Sanjay · Nov 6, 10:03 PM · #
Sanjay is so much like the guitarist in that scene in Spinal Tap, the one who thinks he’s an expert on anatomy because he’s wearing a t-shirt with a skeleton on it.
— Chet · Nov 6, 10:20 PM · #
Chet is so much like Chet in Weird Science. A total dick.
— Lasorda · Nov 6, 11:19 PM · #
Yeah, but he’s trying to be like Freddie — he has no argument against so he just tries to rattle an adult by being a dick. Years of dealing with toddlers render us immune…
— Sanjay · Nov 7, 03:39 AM · #
Argument against what, Sanjay? That Bush the Lesser will be considered a foreign policy genius in years to come?
That’s so self-evidently stupid no counter-argument is necessary. What I can’t figure out is why someone so deeply concerned with how others perceive him would continue to say something he must know makes him look like a moron.
— Chet · Nov 7, 08:03 AM · #
Sanjay is obsessed with me.
— Freddie · Nov 8, 12:14 AM · #
Conor wrote:
First, I see nothing wrong with doing something to counter the out-of-control spin employed by your enemies. But then, you don’t see people like Pelosi, Reid, and yes, even Obama as as enemy. But they are. They are doing their best to destroy everything has made this country exceptional.
Second, your remark presupposes, once again, that somehow you’re above the fray. YOU don’t participate in spin. YOU are more honest than Jonah. JONAH loves Republicans, but you, because you are more discerning, don’t back them because they have made mistakes in the past. YOU haven’t sold out for big bucks like Beck, O’Reilly, Goldberg, et. al. who don’t really believe the tripe they’re peddling. It wasn’t these guys who have appeared to change sides. It’s more people like you and David Frum who appear to have made a pact with the devil in order to get more notoriety. How’s that thing with Tina Brown working out?
— jd · Nov 9, 12:49 AM · #
Sanjay wrote:
CAIR to explain what the hell you’re talking about? Post a link, willya?
— jd · Nov 9, 02:10 AM · #
My comment to Conor Friedersdorf is as yet unanswered. Should that change, I hope the response reflects his genuinely held convictions, rather than his efforts to “do his part“ in the spin wars.
Perhaps he’s choosing to ignore me because I’m raising a strawman or a weakman, or because I’m drawing a distinction without a difference. Or maybe he suspects I’m desperate to get noticed by someone with a wider audience. Damn it.
I’m also still waiting for Sanjay to post some of that “vile shit” from The Corner. Crickets are chirping.
— jd · Nov 9, 02:27 PM · #
God, I’m lonely.
— jd · Nov 9, 03:45 PM · #
I’m not really Sanjay. I’m just checking to see if anyone other than Conor could pose as someone other than himself.
— sanjay · Nov 9, 08:10 PM · #
Well, jd, shit, some of us spend the weekends with our families — cool your jets.
I’m not a Corner reader but as far as I can tell from general media sources you’re right and my prediction was off: I hear stuff that bothers me one-on-one but the general talking head reaction has been much more measured than I’d thought. I’m sure I can go to the appropriate loons to get me some Muslim-bashing but I don’t, and that would be overstating their importance; so I was way off.
But don’t knock me when I’m away for a couple days! I have a family, a job, people I have to give some direction to, and projects to manage. JMann and Mike are thinkers, I’d have been interested in joining their conversation or seeing what Friedersdorf thinks. Instead you’ve got a bunch of dudes sitting around munching Doritos who’ve decided the right game to play, when you have no substantive thought or expertise, is to make the comments unreadable, and it makes the thinkers hard to get at. In general I’m thinking Sargent, Comstock and the other guys finding this unuseful are ahead of me — so, sorry, I don’t expect I will reply on demand!
— Sanjay · Nov 9, 10:27 PM · #
Hey Sanjay – I hope all is going well for you. I love reading your comments, but if commenting is actually making you mad, I won’t hold it against you if you take a break.
(I’m aiming for sympathy — I love reading your beat-downs, but they seem to be getting more frequent).
Without Ross and Reihan, and with less Alan and Noah, I fear that TAS may have entered its bronze age. (In the comic book sense, not in the historical sense). The comments may go the same way, alas.
— J Mann · Nov 9, 10:56 PM · #
Thanks, JMann, not at all unsettled — I have small children! — but not feeling like it’s useful. I mean, everyone thinks their shit is brilliant — but you have a thought about, say, when Presidents are and aren’t effective, Freddie pops up and says something patently dumb, you say, that’s dumb, what is it you’re trying to say, and he can’t defend it and is pissed anayway ‘cuz you’ve pointed at some Freddie racism, and so he decides to shit all over the comments like the unhousebroken sad sack college dick he is. I think the point up there about Asia policy is far undermade — I mean, does anyone serious think Middle East policy is more important than Asia policy, or that Obama and Clinton did better with China, Japan and India than Bush did? — but Chet, who has never considered Asia policy, will inevitably pop up to bitch that I have a Ph. D. and he doesn’t, so we don’t discuss that point. And jd, fuck, man, thinks this is what I do Saturday nights. I get to beat down idiots all day: no sweat. But I don’t feel like I’m learning anything anymore. Which sucks because Manzi, Friedersdorf, Millman and co. are actually interesting to kick ideas off of. But you get nothing from people who’ve done nothing and that isn’t surprising!
Shoot me an email sometime, you fascist conservative, you…
— Sanjay · Nov 10, 03:57 AM · #
Frustration with the average rigor around here was part of it. What finally convinced me to roll back my participation was how cheap and thoughtless I was becoming. I was seduced by broken windows into a boorish vulgarity: because I expected no return from better effort, I spent less time and was on the whole less considered in my writings and opinions. And when I do that I’m wasting time. Both mine and yours.
That said, I think Sanjay’s right about Bush’s foreign policy. The hardest thing in the world for a dominant power to do is to manage the rise of an equipotential competitor. Too hard a line and you risk a China “isolated in their rage”, which was de Gaulle’s worry, and either drive them into an adverse coalition with Russia — the second worst outcome — or you force them to fight for what they see as their rightful place at the table. Equally significant risks attach to a course that’s too shy and conciliatory. First and foremost: credibility with allies and enemies.
Thinking about that de Gaulle quote sent me to pull out my copy of Kissinger’s White House Years, where I found a passage that seems relevant to Bush’s strategy with Asia.
I have no special love for the Dalai Lama, but ditching him to score some atmospherics with China was bad diplomacy. One of our greatest strengths is our unreasonably strident, moral self-righteousness. Our loud and clumsy humanism, our ecclesiastical optimism in progress and understanding, our amateurish and unmaturable zeal — these are assets, to be set aside only under duress. They should under no circumstances be muted just because we want to avoid one uncomfortable PR sentence from an authoritarian government. I don’t care how much of our debt they own; it lowers our eyes when we change our nature for no gain whatsoever. When we do stupid shit like that, we look overly anxious to appease, and too easily spooked by furrowed brows and frowny faces; we look overly solicitous of foreign and domestic opinion; and, specifically, we appear obsessed with the 24 hour news cycle and the eternal campaign. All of these things can be — will be — manipulated by governments with smaller electorates and bigger balls.
Something else jumped out at me, too, regarding Obama’s callous indifference to the British. Kissinger wrote that “we do not suffer in the world from such an excess of friends that we should discourage those who feel that they have a special friendship for us.” We need more and better friends, not fewer really good ones.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Nov 10, 05:47 AM · #
JD,
I’ve lost interest in arguing with you, so don’t expect any responses from me in the future. That’s inevitably going to sound like a dig, but I suppose it’s better than allowing you to invest energy writing comments in the hope that I might respond.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Nov 10, 06:23 AM · #
“I fear that TAS may have entered its bronze age. (In the comic book sense, not in the historical sense).”
I have noticed that comment sections tend to devolve over time as the most offensive and agressive drive everyone else out. I came over here from Mathew Yglesisas becasue it got too stupid over there. Where am I going to go now?
— cw · Nov 10, 07:03 AM · #
Pamplona.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Nov 10, 05:13 PM · #
Pamploma?
Intriguing. Perhaps it is time for me to re-affirm my manhood. A breif course in Men’s Studies at the University of El Toro might be just the thing. I would return with a diploma from Pamploma and a certain swagger. Perhaps my wife would start to find me attractive again. For sure everyone here at TAS would be forced to finally accord me the respect I deserve….
¡Adios, amigos! !Voy ala Espania!
— cw · Nov 10, 06:34 PM · #